Beacon Lights of History, Volume 05 eBook

The Koran; Dean Prideaux’s Life of Mohammed;
Vie de Mahomet, by the Comte de Boulainvilliers; Gagnier’s
Life of Mohammed; Ockley’s History of the Saracens;
Gibbon, fiftieth chapter; Hallam’s Middle Ages;
Milman’s Latin Christianity; Dr. Weil’s
Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre;
Renan, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1851; Bustner’s
Pilgrimage to El Medina and Mecca; Life of Mahomet,
by Washington Irving; Essai sur l’Histoire des
Arabes, par A.P. Caussin de Perceval; Carlyle’s
Lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship; E.A. Freeman’s
Lectures on the History of the Saracens; Forster’s
Mahometanism Unveiled; Maurice on the Religions of
the World; Life and Religion of Mohammed, translated
from the Persian, by Rev. I.L. Merrick.

CHARLEMAGNE.

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*

A.D. 742-814.

REVIVAL OF WESTERN EMPIRE.

The most illustrious monarch of the Middle Ages was
doubtless Charlemagne. Certainly he was the first
great statesman, hero, and organizer that looms up
to view after the dissolution of the Roman Empire.
Therefore I present him as one with whom is associated
an epoch in civilization. To him we date the
first memorable step which Europe took out of the
anarchies of the Merovingian age. His dream was
to revive the Empire that had fallen. He was
the first to labor, with giant strength, to restore
what vice and violence had destroyed. He did not
succeed in realizing the great ends to which he aspired,
but his aspirations were lofty. It was not in
the power of any man to civilize semi-barbarians in
a single reign; but if he attempted impossibilities
he did not live in vain, since he bequeathed some permanent
conquests and some great traditions. He left
a great legacy to civilization. His life has
not dramatic interest like that of Hildebrand, nor
poetic interest like the lives of the leaders of the
Crusades; but it is very instructive. He was
the pride of his own generation, and the boast of
succeeding ages, “claimed,” says Sismondi,
“by the Church as a saint, by the French as
the greatest of their kings, by the Germans as their
countryman, and by the Italians as their emperor.”

His remote ancestors, it is said, were ecclesiastical
magnates. His grandfather was Charles Martel,
who gained such signal victories over the Mohammedan
Saracens; his father was Pepin, who was a renowned
conqueror, and who subdued the southern part of France,
or Gaul. He did not rise, like Clovis, from the
condition of a chieftain of a tribe of barbarians;
nor, like the founder of his family, from a mayor of
the palace, or minister of the Merovingian kings.
His early life was spent amid the turmoils and dangers
of camps, and as a young man he was distinguished
for precocity of talent, manly beauty, and gigantic
physical strength. He was a type of chivalry,
before chivalry arose. He was born to greatness,
and early succeeded to a great inheritance. At